Businesses grow concerned about Trump after early excitement

Many businesses are quickly morphing from excited partners of a new White House to wary bystanders, trying to guard against damage from a new president.

The change of tune, just two weeks into the Trump administration, has a wide range of lobbyists, trade associations and CEOs on the defensive from early moves such as the executive order limiting immigration or a proposed border tax, according to interviews with more than a dozen business lobbyists and leaders, who mostly declined to be identified due to concerns about blowback. These early moves have worried and galvanized companies as diverse as Apple, Walmart, Amazon, Expedia, Uber, Target and LVMH.

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Some companies and lobbyists remain hopeful their tensions will ease once the administration staffs up with a Treasury secretary and other business contacts in major agencies. But for now, they’re learning to lay low to avoid angering a president who has a propensity to target them on Twitter — a habit that’s creating a minibusiness boom for public relations firms.

“There is a conflict between the desire to start fast to get the economy going and the concern about not having a full team in place to fully understand the implications of some of the fast, early moves,” said one Republican lobbyist, diplomatically describing what others have labeled as chaotic.

It’s an inauspicious start for the CEO-turned-politician, who cast himself as the most corporate-friendly president since Ronald Reagan and kicked off his first days in office with a handful of meetings and photo-ops with CEOs and union officials, all of which emphasized keeping jobs in America. That’s a theme he is expected to hit in the coming days, including at a meeting with CEOs on Friday.

White House spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Business executives felt hopeful that a friendly Republican-controlled Congress would push through tax reform and consider a large infrastructure package. Now, they’re on edge that their bottom lines are going to be hurt by an administration that seems to be making policy on the fly, with little input from congressional leaders or federal agencies where they often engage with an administration.

The Trump team’s initial stabs at policy like the border tax, elimination of regulations and executive orders are creating confusion and discord among many businesses.

With the travel ban hitting immigrants, “companies are torn between media and employee pressure to speak out and a desire to have a seat at the table with the administration,” said Stewart Verdery, a lobbyist at Monument Policy Group whose clients include technology and travel companies.

Part of the problem stems from the lack of organized outreach to the business community, several lobbyists said. Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, is still awaiting Senate confirmation, so businesses are haphazardly making contact through any personal connections they have to key players like Jared Kushner, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro or the director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn.

Trump’s initial meeting with a dozen CEOs — on the first Monday of his presidency — was a hastily organized affair, several sources said, with invitations extended the Sunday before the Monday morning meeting.

The Trump administration is trying to boost its outreach to the Democratic-leaning Silicon Valley, with the help of entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who was intimately involved in the transition, said two Republican lobbyists. That task is complicated by tech companies’ anger over the immigration executive order. Both Amazon and Expedia have joined in on the legal challenge to that order, filed by the Washington state attorney general. Other companies such as Twitter are considering signing an amicus brief.

The other major concern for businesses is the lack of insight into Trump’s policy agenda, which was not flushed out during the election. No one knows which of the regulations the Trump administration plans to roll back — though Trump himself promised to roll back 75 percent of them.

"My people meet with him, and they come away reassured,” said a top business official in New York. “And then he goes off and says something. It's the volatility that worries everyone.”

It is also not clear whether Trump will ultimately support any of the existing Republican policy blueprints like the one from House Speaker Paul Ryan. “You could have a situation where there’s agreement to get something passed, but then the president decides, ‘I don’t like this,’ and it could blow up months or years of work,” said one lobbyist. “That never would have happened with Obama or Bush. That is a big worry.”

Trump has vowed to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent — but recently said it could be more like "15 to 20 percent." Several lobbyists and people close to the administration said they had no specific plan how to do that yet, and that it could prove impossible.

Business executives and lobbyists say it is less about the rate, and more about whether valuable deductions are eliminated.

“We have a lot of clients who say, ‘We've had the benefit of all these deductions. We're scared. What are we going to lose?’” said uber-lobbyist and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Trump's talk on a border-adjustment tax has also scared companies, Lott says, and his recent announcement that they would have to buy certain materials in the United States for a pipeline rattled business leaders. It's atypical for Republicans to tell businesses what decisions to make, lobbyists and business leaders say. “But I think people would be happy even if he got it to 20 or 25 percent,” he said of the corporate tax rate.

For now, businesses are trying to maintain a breezy tone and sense of goodwill.

“The fundamental change is that this administration is eager to hear firsthand from a wide variety of voices on things the government is doing and not doing,” said Neil Bradley, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “That conversation did not happen for the last several years. In some ways, the act of having the meeting [with CEOs] is a sea change in and of itself.”

Companies say they are privately laying their own groundwork for the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. They’re retooling their public relations messaging on job creation and a crisis communication strategy, lest Trump call them out on Twitter.

The top D.C. lobbyist for Ford Motor Co., for instance, tweeted out a chart on Jan. 19 of all of the jobs Ford has created in the past five years in the U.S.

Many companies are working with public relations gurus on how to react if they get caught in Trump’s cross hairs.

“Every firm is putting out a memo on how to do this,” said one public relations consultant to multinational firms. “It’s not like anyone has pre-cornered the market of what to do when the president tweets at you. It’s all brand new.”

Businesses across sectors are also playing up their investments within the American economy — rather than their global footprint. “If you’re doing something to bring jobs home to America, it is a story that you need to be telling the new administration,” said Dave Schnittger, a senior policy adviser at Squire Patton Boggs and former deputy chief of staff to House Speaker John Boehner. “Those who are wise are starting to do it because that is the heart of the president’s message.”